Texas Military - Lost Battalion.......

greenberetTFS · 08-05-2012, 20:52

Great history story........

http://www.texasmilitaryforcesmuseum...on/history.htm

Big Teddy

Richard · 08-06-2012, 04:08

The "Lost Battalion" is from the North Texas area and was centered around the Decatur area just to the West of Denton. I've met several of them when visiting their 'museum' in the Wise County Historical Society's building in Decatur.

The Historical Society is located in one of the tallest of the older buildings in Decatur, the old Baptist College just down the hill to the South of the red stone Courthouse (built ca. 1890). Upstairs on the third floor next to the former college's auditorium is the museum for the "Lost Battalion."

It is a room approximately 30'x40' which is chocked full of display cases and artifacts of the soldiers, the unit, their travails during WW2, and their families.

http://www.wisehistory.com/lost_battalion.html

It isn't visited much, and every time I've gone there, the curator gave me the key to the door and asked that I returned it when we were finished viewing the displays.

IMO, it is one of those 'hidden gems' of a unit history collection, and I just happened to stumble upon it when I took my parents to the historical society while they were visiting and researching our family history (my father's mother was from Wise County). I've visited it a half dozen or so times since living here and would recommend it to anyone when visiting the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Richard

ZonieDiver · 08-06-2012, 06:05

Pardon a slight detour -

On the way to NC in early July, I stopped off in Diagonal, Iowa - population 330 - with a friend for her family reunion. This little town had a building that served as a museum, primarily for the town's original newspaper - printing press, etc.

On the second floor, there were displays of various families and artifacts from their lives. Prominently displayed were uniforms, equipment, pictures, letters, etc. from various veterans of military service. My friend had donated her brother's jump boots and other things to the museum. I was fascinated. The a/c didn't work well, but I had to be dragged out to go visit other 'sights' in the area.

For the reunion, I had made a shadow box to honor her brother's service. I showed her how to access NPRC to get his records and medals. When she and I first started going out, I noticed a picture she had of her brother (who died of heart failure in 1977 at age 32... congenital heart defect. It hadn't kept him out of the draft in 1964. He'd volunteered for Airborne once drafted, and the picture I saw showed his jump wings with background, camoflauge scarf, and other awards and decorations. (He was in khaki's - best uniform ever.) I asked where he'd served, and she said Panama.

It turned out that he had served with HHC, 3/508 PIR at Ft. Kobbe, CZ in '65-'66, just five years before I was there (by which time it was 3/5... and only one company - A Company - was airborne. His records revealed that he had been attached from HHC to A Company as a radio repairman. I was assigned to A Company, but attached to CSC's 4.2 inch Mortar Platoon - which in his time would have been part of HHC. He and I were both "Moatengators". Small world.

The hardest part of the shadow box was getting the "dragon patch" of the 3/508th from that time period. I had a set of his fatigues, but didn't want to cut it off. The internet was no help. Surplus stores couldn't order one from suppliers. Facebook came through. A 3/508th vet from '61-62 sent me one, and wanted NO payment. (I did send him an MPC given to me by an august member of this Band of Brothers.) Even though I never met her brother Randy, he was my Brother, too.

His heart problems were well-documented. It kept him out of some high school sports. However, he was drafted! He, and his family, didn't protest, appeal, or object. He went. He served. He volunteered to be a paratrooper. He was from small-town Iowa, and ladies and gentlemen, that's WTF one did in those seemingly long-gone days.

MR2 · 08-06-2012, 06:39

Nice detour.

greenberetTFS · 08-06-2012, 11:23

ZD

Sounds like he had a lot of guts,bad heart but still went airborne........

Big Teddy

Pericles · 08-06-2012, 12:38

On my list - thanks for the tip.

mark46th · 08-06-2012, 13:51

And today, Harry S Truman's grandson is in Hiroshima, apologizing for dropping the bomb. My father was a landing craft driver in the Pacific waiting to invade Japan. I am here because Truman nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Millions of Japanese are still alive today because of the bomb. Truman's grandson should be in Nanking or Manila memorializing the civilians raped and butchered by the Japanese during WWII...

abc_123 · 08-07-2012, 11:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark46th

And today, Harry S Truman's grandson is in Hiroshima, apologizing for dropping the bomb. My father was a landing craft driver in the Pacific waiting to invade Japan. I am here because Truman nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Millions of Japanese are still alive today because of the bomb. Truman's grandson should be in Nanking or Manila memorializing the civilians raped and butchered by the Japanese during WWII...

My Father in law was with the 158 RCT "Bushmasters" during the fighting on Luzon. Their assignment during Operation Downfall was to land and take one of islands of southern Kyushu on X-5!! I don't believe that the plans had them being combat effective after something like X+3.

My father in law empatically stated that he would not have lived past 1945 if those bombs weren't dropped. He was one of only a small handfull of of the group of replacements that he arrived on the phillippines with to make it off the island unwounded, so he was pretty fatalistic.

Inflexible Six · 08-08-2012, 06:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by mark46th

And today, Harry S Truman's grandson is in Hiroshima, apologizing for dropping the bomb.

Now that's a disgrace.

People--including Truman's son, apparently--have forgotten how routinely savage and sadistic the Japanese military was, and the desperate nature of Total War. Maybe he should read some history.

As to the original post, an incredible story. I don't mean to degrade its imporatnce with trivia, but William Holden's character in The Bridge on the River Kwai was a sailor who had survived the sinking of the Houston.